Everything sounds the same

[kumakuma]

28 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

How I see it is that the analogue side of the USB chain is often less than well implemented in terms of how the DAC is fed with data - meaning, the slightest variations, anywhere, impacts how well the DAC does its job. And this includes noise and interference from the digital side of the USB link - change the digital link ever so slightly, and the analogue areas are affected. Circuitry couldn't care less whether we label some part digital, and another part analoge; it's all a big electronic stew, which has to be designed and built well enough to do the job correctly.

 

Frank, you're like a nun teaching a sex education class.

 

You've already admitted you don't own a DAC, have never used a USB cable for audio, and only listen to your CD player.

 

[Allan F]

On 9/25/2018 at 2:16 PM, gmgraves said:

I never would! It's too bad that we Americans can't generally get real Mediterranean anchovies the way the Italians and people from the Cote d'Azure pack them. They are so much better than the anchovies one generally applies to US pizzas. Which, while they are ok on a pizza are just too salty and fishy for use elsewhere.  In my experience, not all salad Nicoise have anchovies, but they all seem to have a local canned tuna, that again, tastes nothing like StarKist or Chicken-of-the-Sea

 

 

When I was traveling in the south of France many years ago, I fell in love with the pan bagnat - a sandwich consisting of a fresh Salade Nicoise on a big round bun. I made it a habit to eat one every day. Delicious and healthy to boot!

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, esldude said:

Actually I think silver oxide is not a bad conductor.  Most silver tarnishing includes a fair amount of silver sulfide which is a semi-conductor at best.  Silver chloride is also usually part of the silver tarnish.  

 

What else is a semiconductor? A diode. Diodes rectify (i.E. they permit current to travel in only one direction) Not what you want in an audio connection. No, gold is the best interface between two connector surfaces.

[fas42]

20 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Frank, you're like a nun teaching a sex education class.

 

You've already admitted you don't own a DAC, have never used a USB cable for audio, and only listen to your CD player.

 

 

Tsk, you seem not to appreciate what it means to be an engineer - the latter means someone who should have the ability to assess whether the design and reality of something at arm's length is adequate or not; if it is clear that the approach is not good enough, even on paper, then the reality has even less chance of making the grade ...

 

I've done a few of my own designs of electricals, to try various things in audio - guess what, they all worked first time, after putting them together. In the old days they tried building things, which fell down; they kept repeating this until it didn't fall down - we've moved on a bit from there.

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, mansr said:

Really?

"Here is everyday help for all of us because we live in a toxic world.  Contains the programmed frequencies to neutralize the residue from low level toxins plus the residue from many in the mid range."

 

Or did you mean DeoxIT?

I obviously meant DeOxIT. So I misremembered what the stuff is called. so crucify me!

[Ralf11]

DeToxit is probably better for SQ...

 

removes jitter AND it's a floor cleaner!

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

It's a common belief that gold solves the problem - unfortunately, it doesn't. In the days when I was investigating this area I attempted to use the supposed capability of gold alone to improve the integrity of connections - it always failed. I find silver works, but only in the form of the silver greases and paints made for creating conductivity.

If your surfaces are clean, it most assuredly does solve the "problem" - usually. not good enough for your particular neurosis? clean the connections good and apply a drop or two of Stabilant 22. It used to be sold by Dayton-Wright as a product called "Tweek". Stabilant has both NASA and US Military "Mil-Spec" numbers. It also has an SAE designation and is used in the motor industry. This stuff is real. A combination of clean, gold, mating surfaces on your audio connectors and Stabilant 22 applied should be better than a soldered interconnect. I keep a 15ml bottle handy at all times. It works!

http://tinyurl.com/y9vl4hz7

[gmgraves]

12 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

DeToxit is probably better for SQ...

 

removes jitter AND it's a floor cleaner!

It's also a breath mint. Very versatile stuff, that DeToxit!

 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

In nearly every area a cable consists of multiple conductors, each performing a particular function - that's the context I was considering.

Not necessarily. Many "boutique" cables consist of bundles of individually insulated strands, all carrying exactly the same signal, and don't bring-up "skin-effect", it doesn't exist below about 10 MHz. This is true in Interconnects and speaker cables. Some multi stranded signal cables (like the wiring loom in a modern car do consist of large multi-wire cables each performing a different task, but that has little to do with audio. 

 

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

The digital signal is analogue - you can look at it on an analogue scope, and it has all the properties of any analogue waveform. But in terms of its significance in the circuitry in which it's found, yes, its value is its digital behaviour.

While that's true in a sense, I might add that the circuitry using that digital signal doesn't care that the signal is a variable voltage or current. All it cares about is being able to read the ones and zeros. There can be all kinds of noise accompanying those ones and zeros, but as long as the receiver circuitry can pull the ones and zeros out of the noise, it doesn't matter. Most digital signals go through a level detector and into a FIFO anyway. The FiFO has it's own clock and if the digital stream gets spread out or pinched together during the transmission, The FIFO restores the correct timing (I.E. the interval between each bit). 

[gmgraves]

47 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

When I was traveling in the south of France many years ago, I fell in love with the pan bagnat - a sandwich consisting of a fresh Salade Nicoise on a big round bun. I made it a habit to eat one every day. Delicious and healthy to boot!

Oh yes. I had one of those on the beach at Cannes. You're right. Just incredibly delicious!

[Superdad]

58 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Circuitry couldn't care less whether we label some part digital, and another part analoge; it's all a big electronic stew, which has to be designed and built well enough to do the job correctly.

 

Well there is one (rather general) statement that I think most here can agree upon. 

 

But deeper understanding of the issues at play in digital circuits does not come easily. And I see far too many casual judgements and generalizations coming from observational lay-folk.  JS talks to me all the time about the core considerations of high-speed circuits--and the many things that he sees (by looking at their layouts and topology) which a lot of engineers get wrong.  Yet I admit that I can fully comprehend only about half of what he says (and then I retain only about half of that half). 

 

I think it is fine--and valid--for people to experiment and report sonic differences (very much including in the realm that skeptics here who wrongly think we are delusional about).  But I bristle a bit when observationists (I use the term to give a bit more respect than the maligned "subjectivist") venture too far into the intersection of digital circuit design and performance without having real background in it.  Down at the board level, things are generally not what they seem, and there are a significant number of factors in signal transmission, power network induced jitter, and forms of noise that can cross barriers (both flip-flops and isolators) which do not readily yield their secrets.

 

And to those engineers here who believe they understand and know all there is to know: Let's see you produce some real products or put forth innovative circuit ideas to solve the issues that limit audio advancement (as evidenced by the tweaks so many currently use and report about).  Oh, that's right--to many of you these issues don't exist at all.   That being the case, we'll just keep innovating along our own path...

[lucretius]

12 hours ago, lmitche said:

The physical layer.

 

If you mean the physical layer, then say so and stop referring to it as the analog infrastructure -- which mistakenly obscures the difference between digital and analog circuits.

[wgscott]

s/mistakenly/deliberately/g

[fas42]

That was a real perl ...

[fas42]

41 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

If your surfaces are clean, it most assuredly does solve the "problem" - usually. not good enough for your particular neurosis? clean the connections good and apply a drop or two of Stabilant 22. It used to be sold by Dayton-Wright as a product called "Tweek". Stabilant has both NASA and US Military "Mil-Spec" numbers. It also has an SAE designation and is used in the motor industry. This stuff is real. A combination of clean, gold, mating surfaces on your audio connectors and Stabilant 22 applied should be better than a soldered interconnect. I keep a 15ml bottle handy at all times. It works!

http://tinyurl.com/y9vl4hz7

 

We've been here over and over and over again, George . The contact enhancers I tried didn't "solve the problem" - they changed the progession of degradation, and ultimately made it worse - for audio. Which was confirmed by thoroughly cleaning the enhancer gunk off, and immediately listening to a enhancer free, minty fresh connection. Repeated the exercise several times - enhancers like this were then struck off the list of useful tweaks.

 

The contact area has to have sufficent integrity - end of story. I've found solutions which work, so they automatically get used, every time.

[jabbr]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

We've been here over and over and over again, George . The contact enhancers I tried didn't "solve the problem" - they changed the progession of degradation, and ultimately made it worse - for audio. Which was confirmed by thoroughly cleaning the enhancer gunk off, and immediately listening to a enhancer free, minty fresh connection. Repeated the exercise several times - enhancers like this were then struck off the list of useful tweaks.

 

For an electrical engineering point of view, particularly from a high speed digital electronics point of view, we are waaaaay beyond this.

 

Kind of like, we've heard this so many times from you that you really need to write about something else if you can.

 

Ethernet plugs don;t have this issue, indeed work at 10 Gbs without problems, and SI is routinely measured (i.e. eye diagrams are specified). Likewise PCIe cards, even high speed multi core CPUs -- think Xeon/AMD etc -- some are soldered to the board but others have engineered sockets -- that work!

 

So, yeah heard that over and over, but please not another 3000 posts on this topic.

 

Most of us are talking about "Computer" i.e. digital issues with sound.

 

High speed digital connectors are certainly an interesting issue but you don't post about those.

[jabbr]

8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The contact area has to have sufficent integrity - end of story.

Right, end of story please.

[kumakuma]

8 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Right, end of story please.

 

 

[fas42]

2 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Ethernet plugs don;t have this issue, indeed work at 10 Gbs without problems, and SI is routinely measured (i.e. eye diagrams are specified). Likewise PCIe cards, even high speed multi core CPUs -- think Xeon/AMD etc -- some are soldered to the board but others have engineered sockets -- that work!

 

Of course they do - because they only have to deal with digital integrity, not analogue integrity. But, the analogue quality of those contacts may impact analogue areas elsewhere, via a non-obvious linkage.

 

Quote

 

So, yeah heard that over and over, but please not another 3000 posts on this topic.

 

Most of us are talking about "Computer" i.e. digital issues with sound.

 

High speed digital connectors are certainly an interesting issue but you don't post about those.

 

See above. Personally, I would do tests with the digital cable contact areas 'enhanced'. Maybe it will make a difference, maybe not. If I had a rig working using those interfaces, that would be an early thing that I would test ...

 

Addendum: all digital is computer, right from the very first Philips and Sony CDPs - there is no fundamental difference anywhere that truly matters; all that is varying is the shape of diamond on the tip of the TT cartridge, so to speak.

 

[jabbr]

8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Of course they do - because they only have to deal with digital integrity, not analogue integrity. But, the analogue quality of those contacts may impact analogue areas elsewhere, via a non-obvious linkage.

 

 

See above. Personally, I would do tests with the digital cable contact areas 'enhanced'. Maybe it will make a difference, maybe not. If I had a rig working using those interfaces, that would be an early thing that I would test ...

 

Addendum: all digital is computer, right from the very first Philips and Sony CDPs - there is no fundamental difference anywhere that truly matters; all that is varying is the shape of diamond on the tip of the TT cartridge, so to speak.

 

Prove you aren't a bot and say something relevant. Seriously. 

[fas42]

 

2 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Prove you aren't a bot and say something relevant. Seriously. 

 

What I see are people obsessed with there being technical issues - requiring technical solutions. Ummm ... it doesn't work that way - achieving signal integrity in the analogue sphere isn't like a lovely programming exercise, that you can write a paper about. <Car analogy alert!> Rather, it requires looking under the hood and noting where poor workshop practices have made things far too twitchy - solve those issues, and all the driveability problems just fade away ...

[mansr]

9 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I obviously meant DeOxIT. So I misremembered what the stuff is called. so crucify me!

Lighten up, Francis. I merely found the idea of using that snake oil on electrical contacts amusing.

[adamdea]

23 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Except for maybe some quantum states of elementary particles, there is nothing digital in this universe that isn't carried or represented by some analog signal. That's how it's been designed, that's how it works, there's nothing new here.

 

And it's mostly wrong-headed that what makes analog devices sound great will also help digital. These are completely different types of signals, used for different purpose, processed differently, running at different frequencies with a completely different result when subjected to the same set of distortions.

I agree

But <pedantry alert.>

The problem with talking about digital and analogue signals -it seems to me- is that one can very easily get confused between the signal in the sense of information content and the signal in the sense of the carrier medium. This is the same problem that bedevilled linguistics until the distinction was clearly drawn between the signifier, signified and the sign.

Unfortunately in the EE field people use the expression  signal rather indiscriminately to mean the signalled information and the voltage/current which tends to confuse thing. Itr then gets even more confusing when people use the word analogue to describe something other than the way of encoding information in the voltage/current..

There may be good reason for this as a shorthand for the function of a circuit but it is dangerous when placed in the hands of people with muddled minds or muddled messages to sell.

What does it even mean to talk about the analogue properties of a signal? What do we have to use the word analogue to describe the medium in which digital information is transmitted. It's not analogue: it's just what it is. Once one dispenses with this category error, then the seductive pseudo-logic that analogue is natural just disappears, as does the blinding "revelation" that digital signals are "really" analogue.

 

I don;lt want to be pedantic but this seems to me to one area where a bit of conceptual clarity really can help. About half of the nonsense peddled about digital audio resolves itself IMHO  when the reorgansised into a statement which makes sense. The extent to which a distortion in the carrier medium matters will depend on signal encoded, the way it is encoded and the way it is decoded. if the information is encoded digitally and the encoding system is the result of smart people thinking fairly hard, then the answer should be that within pretty broad ranges it does not matter at all. if this is not the case, someone has really messed up. Manchester code is really smart. Funnily enough there are never any articles on it in Stereophile.

 

[OldBigEars]

If you've got cloth ears and/or listen to crap, then yes everything kind of sounds the same. 

[marce]

On 9/26/2018 at 12:04 PM, lmitche said:

The simple point here is that digital signals are carried over an analog infrastructure and that whatever makes an analog infrastructure great for reproduction from analog sources also makes it great for reproduction from digital sources.

Nope...